Shooter is a genre of computer games.
The player is in a three-dimensional space and has some freedom of movement. Levels, as a rule, are a limited labyrinth in which enemies, allies and neutral NPCs are located. Most shooters are set in anisotropic space (rooms have an obvious floor and ceiling, and gravity operates in them), although there are some exceptions where space is isotropic (e.g. Descent). The gameplay of a canonical shooter boils down to finding a way out of the level, with the elimination of all obstructing enemies and obstacles (searching for keys to locked doors, remotely opening a passage using controls remote from the door itself). Such are Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and many similar ones, but this is not a feature of a certain era – canonical shooters are still being produced. In the expanded genre, additional objectives are set, such as planting a bomb on an enemy fortification, solving puzzles in the allotted time (System Shock, etc.).
The second factor is linearity. Linearity is a property of a particular level, not of the game as a whole (for example, the Fortress of Mystery level in Doom is completely linear and relies on one tactic, namely the property of different monsters to fight each other; the Unholy Cathedral level, on the contrary, is an example of non-linearity).
Linear levels are levels that are traversed in one possible direction, and the player is only tasked with the combat itself (in a canonical shooter) or a “combat mission”. Non-linear levels can be traversed in many different ways, a large number of rooms are available for visiting in any order, and the player is required not only to explore the level in order to navigate it, but also to determine the most tactically advantageous route for himself. Often some rooms in non-linear levels are not necessary for “clearing” at all, for example, the canonical and at the same time consisting mainly of non-linear levels shooter Wolfenstein 3D had in its labyrinths about half of the rooms, clearing which brought nothing but a small amount of ammunition and prize points; in Doom also often met this kind of rooms, which do not bring the player much benefit, but are taken into account when calculating the percentage of killed monsters and collected, even if low-value, items.
Since most of the levels of a single shooter are usually made by a single author team in the same style (exceptions can be, for example, collective mods), the terms “linear shooter” and “non-linear shooter” are quite correct in most cases. Thus, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, System Shock and many more modern games can be spoken of as non-linear shooters, while Quake 2, Half-Life 2, Bullet Storm and many others can be spoken of as linear. “Non-linearity” in many cases is just a publicity stunt, simply put, a false claim by developers. Also, some games are so loaded with puzzles (for example, Hexen), that with formal linearity (the general order of traversing rooms is strictly set by scripts), navigation and solving puzzles make up such a large part of the gameplay, that it is impossible to call Hexen linear after all.
Third-person view
The above examples refer to the first-person shooter (FPS) subgenre. Later on, the category of third-person shooter (TPS) was also “sprouted” from it. In the first case, the player observes what is happening “from the eyes” and can leave the character’s body only at the moment of in-game screensavers. Authors use this method to make the player associate himself with the character (this remark applies to all first-person games). Accordingly, when playing a third-person game, the player sees the character’s back in front of him and controls him as a detached hero. Such games, for example, include Max Payne and Hitman. Some shooters combine both approaches. Examples of such combinations include The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, in which some of the character’s actions are displayed in third-person; and Splinter Cell games, starting with Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, in which players are divided into two teams in network mode, and depending on their choice, the view of the character can vary. Another example is Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Battlefront II and Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, where the player can freely (in most cases) switch from one mode to another right in the course of the game (by pressing a special key).
Number of players
Shooters can be single-player video games (single-player video game, one person participates in the gameplay, all other game characters are controlled by the computer) and multiplayer video games (multiplayer video game, players play the game together, similar to the single-player mode, or compete with each other on special levels). If among the single-player games in this genre at the moment non-linearity is “out of fashion”, then multiplayer shooters always offer levels, at least having several passages between the areas of appearance of players, respawns, or even a more complex graph of connections between rooms. Counter-Strike is a prime example of a network shooter in general and one that fits this description in particular. Sometimes maps for modern multiplayer games offer the player large open spaces, such as in Battlefield 1942, which allows you to bring together in one battle a large number of infantry and a variety of military equipment. It is quite obvious that in multiplayer mode, where tactics and deceptive techniques are essential for victory, linearity is unacceptable in principle.
